The Nasdaq Composite may have just closed above 10,000 for the first time, but traders say one of its top performers can keep rallying.
It hit the milestone on Wednesday, but was down to 9,957 in Thursday's premarket. Since Dec. 26, when the index first closed above 9,000, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has been a huge contributor to its move higher.
Zoom Video, Tesla, Regeneron, Nvidia, Amazon and eBay are among the 10 best-performing Nasdaq 100 stocks since the day after Christmas.
Of these names, Amazon is still the best choice despite its hefty price tag, said traders Mark Tepper of Strategic Wealth Partners and Miller Tabak's Matt Maley.
"Amazon's the best play right here," Tepper told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Wednesday. The stock closed up nearly 2% at $2,647.45 on Wednesday after hitting a new all-time high.
"It's the best diversified post-Covid play. They're literally in every single business that's going to thrive on a going-forward basis. You've got e-commerce, cloud, digital advertising, personal assistance," Tepper said. "Normally, during periods of heavy investment for Amazon like they're seeing right now, the multiple comes down, but apparently that doesn't matter anymore when the Fed's dishing out trillions of dollars like it's going out of style. So, I think the best pick right here would still be Amazon."
Maley also backed Amazon, adding that the stock tends to act in favor of the bulls from a technical standpoint.
"It's had this huge move. It's getting overbought. It's due for a bit of a pullback like just about every other stock in the market right now," Maley said in the same "Trading Nation" interview.
"But on a longer-term basis, first of all, it had been in a sideways range for about 18 months, and in April, it broke above that range," Maley said. "That was very, very bullish. Then in late May or very early this month, it got stuck in another sideways range and has now broken above that."
Now, with commercial real estate facing problems as businesses large and small run the risk of going under, Amazon could have a built-in bull case on its hands, Maley said.
As the demand for last-mile delivery grows, "that's where they lose a lot of money, a lot of their margin," Maley said. "That is going to change."
"They're going to get commercial real estate, even in small towns, at a cheap price. People are going to go to those places that are still very convenient and buy and pick up their stuff. If they want it taken to their door, they'll still be able to get it, but [Amazon] is going to charge them for that," he said. "So, you're going to have this big pickup in volume that they've gotten recently, … but they're not going to have the costs associated with it. They're actually going to pick up margin. So, both on a fundamental and a technical basis, I think on a long-term basis, Amazon's the best choice."
Both traders also flagged the stocks they wouldn't buy in this group. For Tepper, that was Zoom Video, which struggled to see upside in an increasingly crowded marketplace. For Maley, it was the far-too-overbought stock eBay.
Disclosure: Strategic Wealth Partners is overweight technology stocks and owns shares of Amazon.
